And a little overview of everything I sent him– an Advent calendar to count down to Christmas, a People magazine so he can see everything that happened here with Hurricane Sandy, some Nutella (he had mentioned that he missed eating Nutella), a bag of candy corn, two bags of his favorite trail mix, the keychain pictured above, his cookies and a gift from my mom.

Care Package #2 will be posted as soon as he gets it– and this one I am stoked to show off! Stay tuned!

ETA: he loves the advent calendar I sent to him!

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My fiance’s office had a Halloween party where families could bring their kids and let them go trick or treating through the building– everyone was asked to dress up, and we all brought a snack for the party afterward.

I made Witch’s Fingers Chocolate Covered Pretzels– they were so easy! I melted down green chocolate wafers, dipped some pretzel rods into them, and then pressed a sliced almond onto the end for the fingernail. They looked freakishly realistic yet totally awesome at the same time!

For our costumes, I wanted to do something awesome, but I had the large problem of not having a sewing matching out in Washington, so whatever we were had to be something that could be “constructed” without sewing. After much deliberation (and Pinning), I came up with the idea of being Where’s Waldo, and his girlfriend Wenda. I figured we could go to a thrift store and find red striped shirts (and a denim skirt for me), and at the very least, we could get a white shirt and paint it. Lo and behold, we hit up a Goodwill one night, and within minutes each had a red striped shirt, a red hat, and I even found the perfect denim skirt. A trip to Walmart a few nights later got me red stockings and red and white striped socks! The black glasses were courtesy of the dollar section in Michaels. All in all, both of our costumes combined cost less than $20 and we were a hit at the party!

ETA:

We also carved our first pumpkin together. Nothing major (or elaborate, as I usually do!), but it still turned out cute.

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While I was visiting my fiance in Washington, I had a few hours to kill each day while he was at work. Generally I kept myself busy with my pictures, blogging, working out and crafting. One of the crafts I worked on was hand embroidering these two pillows as a surprise for him before he deployed. I got the idea from some screen printed pillows I had seen online, but I thought the embroidery made a nice touch.

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I love making crayons with silicone molds. Two years ago, I made Easter Egg ones for my students, and this year, I found a great snowflake mold at Christmas Tree Shoppes, and I knew exactly what I’d be giving my students this year for Christmas!

The hardest part is stripping all of the crayons of their little paper clothes:

Just loved how colorful this pile of crayon shards looked 🙂

But the end result was worth it! And the kids loved them!! I gave it to them with a book- Twas the Night Before The Night Before Christmas– a cute story if you ever run across it in the store!

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I’m getting into the Holiday crafting spirit a bit early this year- but there’s a good reason!
My boyfriend is in the Air Force, and for the past 7 months has been stationed in Afghanistan. He just came home, about a week before his birthday, but unfortunately, “home” still isn’t near me. Thankfully, he had a stopover at an airport about 4 hours from me, so I was able to take some time off of work to go down and meet him at the airport. Since his birthday is right around the corner, I got a move on my crafting to make sure I had it finished in time for me to bring down with me. For his birthday, I decided to make him up a starter box of ornaments (he’s never had his own place before, and therefore has absolutely *no* ornaments/decorations- that’s no way to spend your holiday!). I ended up giving him a mix of homemade and store-bought ornaments, but each ornament had a specific reason.
Without further adu…the ornaments, and the explination of how/why I made them:

#1- “Staching Through the Snow”- I hand painted the mustache and wrote “Staching Through the Snow”, and filled it with glittery “snow”– apparently it’s some Air Force tradition to grow out a mustache when you’re deployed- and it’s been the source of many of my jokes towards him (all in good humor of course!).

#2- Poker- one of his favorite passtimes while away was playing poker (and he even won quite a few tournaments!), so I made him these two ornaments out of wooden blocks, scrapbook paper and Poker scrapbook stickers.

#3- Scrabble- another favorite passtime for him is to play me in Words With Friends, a scrabble app on our iPods.

#4- Giants- he’s a huge Giants fan, so I took a glass circle, and using etching cream, etched the Giants logo onto the glass. After it was done, I rubbed a Sharpie marker over it to “tint” it.

#5- Jersey Shore- we’re both from the good ole Jersey Shore, and he’s mentioned more than once that he misses the beach in the summer, so I took beach sand and shells and filled the ornament with his own little piece of the Jersey Shore. The other ornament is purchased- it just says “Jersey Shore” with a picture of a snowman on the beach.

#6- The Distance Between Us- we know that a long distance relationship is going to be difficult, but we’re ready to tackle it– this ornament has two hearts connected by a line- one heart for me in NJ and one for him in WA.

#7- 27 Reasons for your 27th Birthday- this ornament is filled with 27 little origami stars- each star begins as a strip of paper, and on each strip I wrote one reason why I like him before folding it up. Don’t worry- he’ll know what they say- I also wrote them on a separate sheet of paper to give to him as well!A picture of the strips of paper before they were folded-

#8- This one was purchased- he’s a huge fan of his alma mater, Rutgers.

#9- Two airplanes- he’s a pilot, so this was a no brainer- one is a red, glittery biplane, and the other is a glass blown airplane-

#10- Air Force star- found this one in a little shop in Lancaster- it was the ornament that gave me the idea for the whole gift!

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Recently, a long-time friend and I “reconnected”- first through facebook, then through the Scrabble-like game that has basically taken over the iPhone and Andriod app stores- “Words With Friends”. I wanted to send him a little something, so I painted him this Scrabble looking frame and put a picture of us from High School (10 years ago!) inside of it before I mailed it off.